She looked off toward the mountains. “And never fly again?”
“The bear said I wasn’t supposed to let go of the string until I found the living thing attached, but he didn’t actually say what it was I was supposed to do once I found you.” Maybe it was all just a mass rationalization, but I figured not allowing birds to fly was a crime in any reality. “Hop up here on the branch where I can hopefully use both hands.”
She did as I requested, landing with the encumbered talon closest in an attempt to make the job just the tiniest bit easier.
I loosened my grip and rested my wrists on the branch, trying to retain some sort of balance. I held the tab ends of the bow and laughed, mostly to myself. “Something’s going to happen when I pull this apart.”
“Yeah, I’ll be free.”
“No, something more than that; I’ve got a feeling.”
She studied me. “Then don’t do it.”
“After all this?”
Her head movements took on a more animated quality, and I could tell she was a little annoyed with me. “I’m not fucking around; if you don’t think you should do it or something bad is going to happen, don’t.”
I thought about what the bear had said about our natures; about how we did what we did because of who we were.
I pulled both strings.
There was a thunderous crack, the tree trunk split, and I slapped against the limb, causing it to fall even faster with my rebound. The crow exploded in a battering flush of wings, the feather tips swatting me as I was jarred sideways. I slipped to the side and attempted to grab hold of the falling limb-for what reason, I have no idea.
My face turned toward the chill of the sky, and I could see her frozen there with her wings fully extended, the tiny chain bracelet still hanging from her talon. I watched as she hammered the air with those black wings like two, massive blankets thrown into the wind, and then she flew toward the mountains like a razor-as straight as the crow flies.
I tried to get my eyes focused, but it was as if I was looking up from inside a well. I felt a jolt in the core of my body and found that I could move. Everything ached, and I wondered if I’d hit the ground and been knocked unconscious. My muscles were sore-even my rear-end hurt-but it was more the dull thrum of inactivity than the aftermath of impact.
I jerked a shoulder loose, followed by an arm, and then watched as my hand came up and rested on Albert Black Horse’s shoulder. “Whew.”
His face cracked into a wide grin. “We were worried about you.”
I took a deep breath and blew the stale air from my lungs. Looking past him, I could see the entire group from inside the teepee had gathered around with concerned looks on their faces. “I think I need to stand up.”
He placed a hand on my arm and carefully helped me get to my feet as the top of my head bumped the canvas and I leaned inward. “And go outside.”
Albert nodded and ushered me toward the flap that was propped open with the lacings trailing down to the ground.
I stepped into the wooded clearing that I’d remembered from last night. It was morning, and a few members were preparing breakfast in a Dutch oven and a frying pan. An old, porcelain percolator squatted on a log by another campfire. Albert was beside me again and placed a hand on my back as I swayed a little in the clear, flat light of early morning. “You’re all right?”
“I think so.”
I took a few unsteady steps under Albert’s careful inspection and placed a hand on the rooted part of the old, fallen tree. I cleared my throat and spoke to the large man who looked up at me with a cup in his hand. “I’d gladly kill somebody for a cup of that coffee.”
He laughed, plucked another tin cup from the ground, twirled it by the handle like a gunfighter, and picked up the percolator without benefit of a pot holder. He poured me a cup and stood as he handed it to me. “How was your trip around the moon?”
“I am never doing that again.” I looked around, just to make sure the desert of my dreams hadn’t crept up on me. “How did I get back in the teepee?”
He looked puzzled. “You… never left.”
I lifted the mug up, but a slight flip in my stomach caused me to pause. Glancing over to the opening, I could see my hat still laying there with the handkerchief draped over it. “I was in there the whole time?”
The Cheyenne Nation looked at Albert, still standing beside me, and the older man nodded. “You took the peyote, and it was the strangest thing we’d ever seen. You looked around for a bit, and then you just froze and stayed like that for…” He paused to look at his wristwatch and for some reason it reminded me of the bracelet around the crow’s leg in my dream. “Coming up on ten hours.”
“My ass feels like it’s been sat on for ten years.” I forced myself to sip the coffee, and it started tasting good. I glanced at the Bear, who looked a little tired. “You were out here all night?”
“I was.”
I took another sip and approached vaguely human. “You must need a nap.”
“I do, but we have errands to run.”
I looked longingly at the bacon sizzling and popping in the frying pan and could imagine the golden biscuits rising in the Dutch oven. I sighed. “No breakfast?”
“Not unless you can talk Mrs. Small Song and Albert here into a breakfast sandwich to go.”
I chewed the biscuit as we made the turn on the trail into the opening at the base of the hill where Lola, Henry’s ’59 Thunderbird convertible, sat like a chrome-bedecked spaceship. There was somebody I knew in the back, and he wagged his tail and stood with his forelegs on the sill to meet me face to muzzle.
I ruffled his ears. “Are you happy to see me, or are you just happy to see my biscuit?” He didn’t answer, and I was just as pleased to be around an animal that didn’t talk. I turned to the Cheyenne Nation as he slid in the front and slipped the key in the switch. I fed Dog the remainder of my breakfast. “We’re traveling in style today.”
He smiled and closed the driver’s-side door. “We have to pick up Cady and Lena in Billings.”
A major organ in my chest did a flip as I pulled out my pocket watch by the Indian Chief fob just to make sure we had enough time for what I had planned. “Oh, boy.”
“Oh, yes.”
I returned the watch to its pocket, straightened my hat, and placed my hands on the passenger-side door, resting my weight there. “I have failed miserably.”
He barked a dwindling laugh. “We’re making progress.”
“That might not be the way they are going to see it.”
I stood there like that, and he watched me readjust the pancake holster at my back and snap the safety strap on my. 45, his face becoming even more serious as his eyes narrowed like the aperture of a scope.
He turned and placed a forearm on the steering wheel. “There is something else?”
I slid a hand across the gleaming, powder-blue surface of the vintage automobile the Bear had inherited from his father, the hand-buffed paint dancing stars of sunlight. “This is one beautiful car,” I sighed. “And I’m about to utter something I never thought in my wildest dreams I’d ever say: can we trade Lola here for Rezdawg for just about an hour?”
I patted the chrome trim of the Thunderbird and glanced off in the direction of Painted Warrior, where Audrey Plain Feather had met her untimely demise. “We’ve got to do some four-wheeling.”
8
I studied the rain-washed landscape-it must have poured here again during the night-and the edges of everything seemed more poignant, as if the country had redefined itself, imposed a sharper image onto the cliffs and the crowns of lodgepole pines that surrounded the valley.
The cliff was as Lolo Long and I had left it, with the exception of the CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tape the
